


Two Sides of a Coin

by megolas



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-25
Updated: 2004-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:08:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megolas/pseuds/megolas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for  Yuletide 2004 for Prodigy</p>
    </blockquote>





	Two Sides of a Coin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prodigy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigy/gifts).



> Written for Yuletide 2004 for Prodigy

I saw this, well; I thought it was a girl, at a club. She was beautiful, all lines and angles. Like Annie Lenox, you know? Only so much **more**.

I was there with some friends and she was standing by the bar holding a drink and watching the dance floor. She had me when she raised her drink and caught me staring at her. God, I must have looked so stupid, a gangly teenaged youth with the most blatant hard on in the history of teenagers. It still makes me blush to think about it, you know. I couldn't look away because I wanted her so much. I wanted her right there. I could see it, sex on the dance floor, naked hot and sweaty and while everyone danced around us to the heavy beats of the music.

And then, god, then she winked at me. At me! I walked over to the bar, still trying to pretend that this sort of thing happened to me often but really, I was 17 and a virgin. Still a spotty kid whose only sexual experience to date was a quick fumbling jerk off session with my best mate. Which we pretended never happened and that we were drunk.

I never told anyone about that but I still think about it a lot. But I'm not... yeah. I'm not. And I was being chatted up by the most gorgeous girl ever, so I was obviously, you know, not.

She had the most amazing eyes; they were golden in the lights of the club and her mouth. I wanted to be her glass or Christ, the cherry on the cocktail stick. Oh man.

Then she leant forward and kissed me and everything went black. I woke up the next day on my own in my bed with lipstick marks on my shirt and nail marks in my back.

I've been looking for her since. It's not puppy love, it's just. She's the only one for me and I can't touch anyone else because they're not her.

So I'll just have to keep looking. Even if it takes me the rest of my life.

****

Despair sits in front of her mirrors and watches. The rats dance under and over her feet and the mirrors change, displaying frozen seconds of peoples' lives as they open up to her and step into her realm. There's a girl, she's pregnant and sixteen. Her boyfriend called her a slut when she told him and broke up with her. She hates him. And now her parents will kill her if they find out.

She's got sleeping pills. She's already started lining them up in front of her in neat orderly rows. She broke into her parent's liquor cabinet as well, so she has two bottles of vodka to wash it all down with. She reaches for the first handful and Despair watches, her ring dragging painfully though the skin of her cheek and into the corner of her mouth. The blood is warm and salty and she makes a matching cut on the other side as the first handful goes down, the girl choking and spluttering at the harsh burn of the alcohol. She'll chicken out after two handfuls and the paramedics will find her in time. The baby will be a boy and he'll look like his father. She will hate him.

The mirrors fade and swirl and Despair allows what passes for a smile for her to cross her face. Her twin provides richly for her.

****

The boy is wearing a red tie with his black tuxedo. He clutches a box of heart shaped chocolates and a slightly battered corsage and stands uncomfortably at the bottom of the stairs, playing with his cufflinks under the watchful gaze of his girlfriend's father. The girl is hovering just out of his sight at the top of the stairs adjusting her dress for the thousandth time before she steps into view.

The boy's face lights up and the girl smiles back as she walks down the stairs. Tonight is their prom. They'll dance together, cheek to cheek under the balloons and decorations. They'll pose for photographs and laugh like this is the way it's going to be for the rest of their lives. When the teachers aren't looking, they'll drink illicit alcohol out of a hip flask under the bleachers and get so drunk that when they sleep together in a motel room at the end of the night, she'll wake up in the morning feeling uncomfortable and used and he won't be able to really meet her eyes. They'll break up before they reach college and always feel that twinge of discomfort when they come home for the holidays and run into each other at the mall.

Desire loves the bitter-sweet taste of young love disillusioned.

****

The girl sits in the middle of the blood stained sheets. She's holding a knife and her tears are mixing with the blood on her face. She hadn't meant to do it but in the end it all came down to a fight and then it all went wrong. She'd grabbed the knife and then...she didn't mean to stab her sweetheart, really. And now she's sitting here in the middle of it all. They'd promised they'd be together forever and she wears her sweetheart's ring. But her sweetheart's flesh was so soft under the knife and she's so sorry. So sorry. She didn't mean to... she's sorry. But sorry isn't going to bring her sweetheart back.

Despair's ring pierces the soft skin around her eye and the blood runs down her cheek like the tears on the girl's face. This one is tasty, her despair is rich and the rats agree, pausing in the mist to chirp at Despair before the mirrors change again.

****

Desire is cruel and fleeting, Despair is always there to collect what Desire has tired of. She follows behind in Desire's footsteps with her mirror and her rats. There'd be no point in having the one without the other. They're twinned for that reason.


End file.
